


Unclear

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Broken Bond, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/M, Family, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Ghosts, Forgiveness, Hurt/Comfort, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Rey Needs A Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:07:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23206723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Ben's thoughts on his feelings for Rey, Rey's reaction to a broken bond, Ben's family reunion in the Force. A character/relationship study on both Ben Solo and Rey, surrounding that one awful, awful moment from Rise of Skywalker. You know the one. Spoiler heavy, canon compliant.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	Unclear

Kissing; what a strange, novel idea. Who’d come up with it? It was such an odd concept—the meeting of two lips for purposes of pleasure and expression of emotions that couldn’t otherwise be expressed. _I should’ve done this sooner,_ a wistful, childish, _aching_ part of Ben Solo’s mind whispered to him as his lips met Rey’s. He rather liked it.

He pulled away from her and met her eyes, a terrified, chaotic _giddiness_ creeping up the back of his throat, electrifying every nerve in his body. She was alive! Wait, hold on, why did he care? _Did_ he care? Yes. Had he always cared? …unclear.

The thoughts in his head were racing, happening instantaneously. She’d kissed him! Or had he kissed her? Who had initiated? Did it matter? His lips tingled. His hands were shaking. Had he always felt this way about this scavenger girl, this daughter of nobody, this child of the force, this Matriarch of the Jedi Order? …unclear.

She was radiant to him. She always had been. In the beginning, it was obnoxious: a blinding light that wrapped the deep, dark, empty void inside of him and suffocated it. In the beginning, she had been stifling. It had been hard to breathe around her. Then again, it was still hard to breath around her. Even now, his heart was racing and he could hardly drag the oxygen back into his lungs. It had been rage back then. Now it was… joy? Hope? Pain? Regret? (Grief?)

Did he love her?

_No,_ a soft, kind voice whispered in his ear (one that sounded remarkably like his mother). _Not yet. Love takes time._ Time he didn’t have.

Ben’s heart constricted painfully. There was a strange longing to be with this girl. No, it wasn’t strange. That longing had always been there. She completed him. Her light to his darkness. His own light to save her from the dark. Dyads in the Force. Bonded. Two sides of the same coin. She was his _savior_. And, if nothing else, he was glad he had been able to save her as well, in the end.

Something deep inside of him tugged and he knew that end was drawing near. They were holding each other’s faces, he was smiling. He was laughing. He was happy! He was so happy! And sad. He was so very sad. There were so many things he wanted to do. He wanted to be with that Nobody from Jakku. He wanted the chance to know her. To fall in love with her (or at least be kissed one more time. He really rather liked being kissed.) He wanted to apologize. To atone. To bleed and suffer and- Chewie. He wanted to see Chewie again. He wanted to bury his mother. He wanted to weep at his father’s grave. He wanted to make amends with the spirit of his uncle. He wanted to be a _Jedi!_ Rey could’ve taught him. He would’ve happily been her padawan. He would’ve happily trained an entire generation of padawans. He would’ve done anything. Anything at all.

He didn’t _want_ to die.

He’d hoped that exchanging his life for hers would’ve alleviated the pain. It did not. He didn’t feel that his death held meaning. He didn’t feel it redeemed him from the murder, from the genocide. It didn’t alleviate the guilt. But Rey forgave him. He could see it on her face, in her eyes. And that was good enough.

It was such a strange subject, dying. He couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the idea of not waking up tomorrow. Rey would wake up. After this, she would return home (alone), she would sleep, and tomorrow she would wake up. And he would not. Planets would orbit their stars—twin suns would rise on Tatooine; on Hoth, snow would continue to fall; traffic on Coruscant would ebb and flow as people milled to and from their homes; storms on Kamino would beat waves into walls of water; Jakku would spin on its axis and continue to dry out; nothing would change. The Galaxy would not mourn the death of Ben Solo. For all his dreams of power, he would die as he had lived: insignificant.

But Rey would live. And that was significant to him.

Another bubble of laughter sprung up his throat (he hadn’t _giggled_ since he was a boy) then, all at once, he was gone. He had expected to die slowly, he had expected there to be pain. But there was no pain. No suffering. The last thing he saw were her eyes, alive and hopeful, and he realized, distantly, he had never seen her smile before. He lived just long enough to know she had caught him in her arms. His consciousness dissipated with the fleeting memory of being held and, _oh,_ how he liked to be held.

***

Ben Solo had not expected the Force to accept him. He had expected (planned, hoped) to disappear, to fade away, to sleep and cease. But after some lengths of time (eons or instantaneously, it was hard to say) every particle of his being coalesced. He felt a hand in his, pulling him upwards, rising. He opened his eyes and saw his mother, Leia Organa, in all her glory. He flinched, wanting to pull away, but she held him tight.

“I waited for you,” she mused, her voice powerful and thunderous and so very gentle as she pulled him close.

He didn’t know if she meant in life, or in death, but it didn’t matter. He buried his face against his mother’s shoulder and he wept. When he felt another pair of arms settling against his back, he turned upwards and met the eyes of his father. The tears came harder. He wanted to apologize but no words came.

“I know,” Han said, just has he had on the wreckage of the Death Star, but it was different this time. This time everyone was dead.

Luke was there too, some distance off. It was not the Luke Ben had known. This Luke was young, cleanshaven, both hands made of blood and bone, face round with youth. His head was bowed in respect, or perhaps in remorse. Pulling away from his parents, Ben lifted his head and called out, “Uncle-“ but the man held up his hands and cut him off.

When Luke lifted his head, Ben saw the face he had always known: bearded, greying, tired in many ways, and utterly unstoppable, a powerhouse of a man, honed and wisened by years of experience and seldom few mistakes. This was the man Ben recognized as his teacher, the man who had appeared to him and fought with him on Crait. This was not the disheveled, grief stricken man from Ahch-To. Not the man Rey had known.

“Don’t bother kid,” Luke said, a soft, wry grin on his face and Ben was startled. He’d expected the Force to be more… strict and stoic. Then again, in his jaded old age, Luke had been neither of those things.

“I ought to be the one to apologize. It’s my fault that-“ but Luke was cut off as Ben reached out (a similar gesture he had offered to Rey so many times.)

“Don’t,” Ben requested. “Please. Let the past die. All is,” his throat constricted once more. He hardly felt worthy to utter these words: “I forgive you,”

Luke hesitated, perhaps startled, perhaps wrestling with his own sense of unworthiness, before reaching out and accepting the hand offered to him.

“I’m happy you finally heard my calls. I’m happy you found the light,” a voice rang out from somewhere behind him, and Ben twisted to see who it was.

A few steps away, a young man with long hair and a smug expression stood, his arms outstretched to the former Supreme Leader, welcoming him. To his right stood an older man with neatly combed red-grey hair and a kind expression. To his right, a Togruta woman who seemed old and young all at once.

Ben felt frozen, he didn’t dare move, save for a soft, surprised, “Grandfather,” to tumble past his lips. And Anakin, for his part, wasted no time in closing the distance between them, wrapping his arms around his grandson.

“Welcome home,” was all Anakin said. It was all that needed to be said.

Ben Solo found himself weeping again as, finally, the guilt, the pain, the regret fell away and he was released. However, as the force wrapped tight around him, leading him off into its cool, wellsprings of eternity, he became distantly aware of a stranger kneeling on the ground far away—a scavenger, hunched over the space where a body no longer lay. He paused, and turned, looking back only once. One last look was all he needed.

***

The ground was hard, cold and dusty. Time ticked by slowly. Rey almost thought she could feel the seconds fall away, lost. Overhead, the sky fell silent as the Resistance forces left for home, one by one, until only she remained. She held Ben’s empty shirt tight in her arms, pressed it against her chest and closed her eyes as if she could pretend it wasn’t empty, that he wasn’t gone.

There should’ve been a body. She wished, desperately, there had been a body. Something to hold onto. Something she could bury (not here, of course. He deserved better than that.) But there was nothing. No closure. Only two discarded legacy sabers and an empty shirt.

Rey knew many things about bonds, having scoured the Jedi Texts for answers to her strange bond with her enemy. She knew of bonds between Padawans and Masters, bonds between friends, between lovers, between soulmates. She knew of Life-Bonds and Training-Bonds and even bonds foraged between animals to appease them—and she knew (for she had muddled through an entire warning chapter on the subject) that breaking bonds was meant to hurt.

As she watched Kylo- as she watched _Ben_ fade away, she had expected pain. She had expected a snap followed by white-hot agony and grief—like a broken bone—but there had been none. When he died, he faded. When he died, the bond they had shared, they had forged (the bond she had so hated) faded as softly as sunlight fading at dusk.

And that was fine, because Kylo Ren/Ben Solo never really meant much to her. He had hurt her too many times, betrayed her over and over and over. Initially, she had seen him as damaged, as a thing she could help, a thing she could repair (she saw somebody like herself, somebody alone.) But she learned slowly, painfully slowly, that you cannot fix somebody else. You cannot change them, they must change themselves. Healing is a choice.

He chose to heal her.

He came back for her. Gave his life for her. She didn’t care that he was gone. She was happy Kylo Ren was no longer burdening the galaxy. But then again, Kylo Ren wasn’t the one she was bonded to. Kylo Ren hadn’t given his life for hers. Kylo Ren died on the wreckage of the Death Star. And Rey couldn’t bring herself to hate Ben Solo.

She clutched the shirt a little tighter. She wasn’t going to cry. She didn’t feel it was necessary. Or perhaps, the pain she felt was beyond tears. Ben Solo had been _saved._ He’d come back to the light. He’d come _home._ And now he was gone and why did that cause her so much distress?

She kissed him. Maybe she’d loved him after all. Or, perhaps, she’d grown accustomed to his face. They’d been bonded. They were meant to be _together._ In what capacity? Unclear. But she had _wanted_ to love him and finally, finally, in the end, he had allowed himself to be loved.

And now he was gone.

Rey had wanted it to hurt. She wanted the breaking of their bond to be something tangible, something painful, something to prove that everything she had thought she felt for the man had been real. But there was no pain, no snap, no suffering; only a quiet distancing. Only a numbness, as if the bond had never been there to begin with, and it brought with it, a hollowness that struck deeper than any agonizing snap.

Slowly, she rose to her feet and quietly climbed aboard Luke’s old X-Wing, prepared to make the journey home in silence. Then, she stopped. For a moment, far away, she thought she saw a man turn back and felt their eyes meet one final time. Then, he was gone and so was she and everything moving forward was so terribly unclear.


End file.
